r the first time since I came back I no longer lean on
Marie. It is she who leans on me.

* * * * * *

CHAPTER XXI

NO!

The opening of our War Museum, which was the conspicuous event of the
following days, filled Crillon with delight.

It was a wooden building, gay with flags, which the municipality had
erected; and Room 1 was occupied by an exhibition of paintings and
drawings by amateurs in high society, all war subjects. Many of them
were sent down from Paris.

Crillon, officially got up in his Sunday clothes, has bought the
catalogue (which is sold for the benefit of the wounded) and he is
struck with wonder by the list of exhibitors. He talks of titles, of
coats of arms, of crowns; he seeks enlightenment in matters of
aristocratic hierarchy. Once, as he stands before the row of frames,
he asks:

"I say, now, which has got most talent in France--a princess or a
duchess?"

He is quite affected by these things, and with his eyes fixed on the
lower edges of the pictures he deciphers the signatures.

In the room which follows this shining exhibition of autographs there
is a crush.

On trestles disposed around the wall trophies are arranged--peaked
helmets, knapsacks covered with tawny hair, ruins of shells.

The complete uniform of a German infantryman has been built up with
items from different sources, some of them stained.

In this room there was a group of convalescents from the overflow
hospital of Viviers. These soldiers looked, and hardly spoke. Several
shrugged their shoulders. But one of them growled in front of the
German phantom, "Ah the swine!"

With a view to propaganda, they have framed a letter from a woman found
in a slain enemy's pocket. A translation is posted up as well, and
they have underlined the passage in which the woman says, "When is this
cursed war going to end?" and in which she laments the increasing cost
of little Johann's keep. At the foot of the page, the woman has
depicted, in a sentimental diagram, the increasing love that she feels
for her man.

How simple and obvious the evidence is! No reasonable person can
dispute that the being whose private life is here thrown to the winds
and who poured out his sweat and his blood in one of these rags was not
responsible for having held a rifle, for having aimed it. In the
presence of these ruins I see with monotonous and implacable obstinacy
that the attacking multitude i